Wonderling

Recyclable Organization!

I've been looking for a pocket-sized accounting ledger to keep track of what I spend "on the go", but I haven't found anything smaller than letter size. I'm at the end of the week from hell and it's threatening to continue through the weekend, so I took a breather and decided to look for small ledgers again and this amazing little website called pocketmod popped up bringing a ray of sunshine to my gray day.

The best part is that you can make anything into a pocketmod booklet. I've seen tourist guides to Italy, Mac OS mini-handbooks and all sorts of other sites with pocketmodded cuteness.

Keep your bike safe

My brother sent me this link that gives you tips on how and where to lock your bike up to avoid it being stolen. It's a great site and it has pictures showing you the 'right way' and the 'wrong way'. I like pictures.

Back to Biking

At work I get a yearly bus pass for the small price of 30-something dollars a month that's automatically taken out of my paycheck. I decided today that I'm not going to renew my annual pass so that I have no choice but to bike to work.

Here's what influenced my decision:

1.This morning my brother sent me a link to the 2008 Bike Commute Challenge where businesses all around the Portland Metro area compete to see who can bike the most days to work in September. You can even form teams within a business to compete as well as challenging individuals to a "commute-off".

2. I ate half a pint of ice cream last night in bed.

3. I spent a decent chunk of money on a perfectly wonderful bike that I rarely use

4. everyone else I know bikes to work (peer pressure!)

I'm happy with my decision. A bit scared that I will have no other option in getting to work, but I think this is the only way that I will buckle down and do it.

Someone also pointed out to me that with the 300+ dollars a year I'll be saving I can spend 200.00 on fun bike attire and still save 100.00! haha, I wont spend that much on "attire", but I am going to get my bike some fenders and myself a nice breathable set of rain gear.

Baking Soda Love

I've always known that baking soda was magical. When I was little my mom treated bee stings with a baking soda/water paste. A few years ago I started to brush my teeth with a baking soda/hydrogen peroxide mix (which actually whitened my teeth!). Now I've been seeing all sorts of baking soda products that can be easily made at home. So when I decided that it was time to remove the moldy, old grip strips from the shower floor (they were there when I moved in) I knew I would end up scouring the entire shower. I decided to see what baking soda and vinegar would do. But why stop there? After cleaning the shower I made some lavender/baking soda deodorant, baking soda shampoo and vinegar rinse.

cleaning the shower was still a pain. I still had to really scrub to get it clean (but this may be because I don't clean the shower until there is a visible layer of soap scum to remind me to clean it!). The deodorant seems to be working well. I put some on this morning and after a day at work I am smell free! I have used all kinds of natural deodorants and none of them worked the entire day. The crystal worked the best, but I still had a hind of BO at the end of the day. I have not yet tried the shampoo and rinse, but I plan on doing that tonight.

Here are the recipes:

Deodorant
equal parts baking soda and corn starch
add whatever scent you want..I chose ground up lavender, but you could use any kind of essential oil as well

Shampoo
1-2 tablespoons of baking soda for every cup of water
use warm water and shake to mix when done

Rinse
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar for every cup of water

so easy!Now I just have to get used to being aroma free. It's a bit strange to not smell like anything.

My first slipcover

A while ago I purchased an IKEA sofabed and couldn't have been happier. I figured that I would look on the IKEA website for slipcovers later, but when I went to look I found that my sofabed didn't have any readymade slipcovers. argh!

So the other day I was riding the bus home and remembered that I had a shower curtain that would make a great slipcover for my little black sofa. I just wasn't sure if it was big enough or if I could even make a slipcover.

So here's what I started with:

And here's what I ended up with:

I think it turned out really nice. Maybe having the Olympics on in the background was good luck. I can't believe I even got all the stripes lined up. Now I'm going to be on the lookout for more shower curtains to make more slipcovers out of (I like to change things up a lot!)

I need these...

Paper Brain is in the studio. That equals hours of time spent in one room with very little to do....other than listen to stuff. Tonight I spent my hours surfing the web. In all my surfing I found a "real" bigfoot, lots of cute shoes and these lovely, wonderful, amazing tabletop items from Lama. If it was humanly possible I would have hearts in my eyes.

How to get free stuff (and other money saving ideas)

It seems that free stuff is always too good to be true. That there's a catch. You have to sign up for something and call in 30 days to cancel or they charge your credit card, you have to visit 12 sponsor sites, your email inbox turns into spam central, etc. Well, I've spent the morning checking out some websites that are all about free stuff and here's what I found.

The good:

gogoshopper.com: freebies listed by category. The links usually take you right to the free sample page and none of the sites required you to enter credit card info. The only downside is that a lot of the offers had expired.

justfreestuff.com: a lot of the same deals as gogoshopper, but with occasional commentary about the link. Also broken down by category and also a lot of expired offers.

Walmart: yes, we are supposed to dispise walmart, but I think we can suspend our hatred just long enough to get some free samples every so often. These offers are current and ever changing. They are also extremely easy to get. All you have to do is enter your mailing info into the walmart site (not into all the different vendors sites)to get your samples.

mygrocerydeals.com: this was my favorite of all the sites I checked out today. I'm putting myself on a strict food budget and this will help immensely. You enter your email address and zip code, then pick your favorite grocery stores. When you log in the site displays all of the sale items from your "preferred" store with sale end dates and even the option to add items to a printable grocery list! It will also tell you if a coupon is needed to get the sale price.

gutenberg.org: project gutenberg is a website devoted to online books, as in whole, complete books. Not just snippits or sections, but the whole thing. There aren't a lot of new books in the database, but there are plenty of great not-new books to read. There are also audio books and even sheet music!

opensourcefood.com: if you haven't been to this site, you are missing out. It's full of amazing recipes that all have photos! I have a hard time wanting to try recipes that I can't see first (I'm a visual person!). You can browse other user submitted recipes or submit your own. Not only that but the website is really user-friendly and the recipes are fantastic!

The not-so-good:

startsampling.com: there were a few coupons. not anything I would have wanted to buy anyway and only one actual free sample of powdered lemon juice.

myfree.com: a lot of links to free stuff that you could find for free on your own very easily (recipes, "ideas", jokes, health and fitness tips). also sweepstakes notices....I'm really not a fan of online sweepstakes.

freebiesgalaxy.com: the freebies that I would have liked were all linked to "try 2 of these silver offers" websites.

There are endless "freebie" websites online. These are just the few that I took the time to try this morning. I have a "junk mail" email address that I used to register with the sites and I highly reccommend having one if you're going to delve into the world of online free stuff.

Hidden Price Hikes

Get Rich Slowly shows the ugly side of the grocery store. These two yogurt containers cost the same, but there's a two oz. difference. Something that most people wouldn't notice, but when you're paying .50 for 8 oz. and they suddenly reduce their product by 2oz, you are now paying .66 for 8oz. Not really a big deal to most people, but if you buy 2 weeks worth of yogurt you will be shorted by 28oz! amazing. I would have been one of those people who just didn't notice.